If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Trying to decide upgrade direction for PC

I think I am reaching the point of finally upgrading my desktop. I've not done so in eons.. the cpu is a first gen core i7. Apart from ssd , I've scarcely touched it. It's just always worked and these days I almost never play games or anything that would require it.

Mainly where I'm running into trouble is editing with Premiere. I've upgraded to the subscription version but my machine can't even handle basic editing with proxy enabled without stuttering and crashing at random intervals.

I'm just not sure if I should stay on the workstation path and upgrade to a Xeon w/Quadro or play it 'safe' and build a more general purpose machine with Core i7/Geforce. I don't want to foreclose options like gaming entirely, although I suspect that will continue to be minimal.

My go to solution is Lenovo ThinkPad workstation editions (W520, W530, W540, W541, P50, P51, P52). Those can be found (depending on the condition, age, specifications) from $200+ to way beyond. But those work really nicely.

Especially with SSD and plenty of RAM. Even my W510s run very nicely with SSDs and plenty of RAM.

W520s with SSD and 2860QM, 2920XM and 2960XM are also very nicely performing machines: 8 years later.

I switched to AMD a long time ago. Quite frankly, my old AM3+ 4-core setup does pretty much everything I need (I'm not into video processing). But it was the case back then that AMD generally had more bang-for-the-buck than Intel systems did.

Given the suggestions https://www.pugetsystems.com/recomme...ecommendations I would try to find a quality motherboard supporting 128 GB of ECC memory and then buy the matching CPU. Intel and AMD are close enough in performance that sale pricing will change the optimum chip. I admit, when I got an offer for the 8-core current AMD product for less than $200, I was very tempted to pick it up.

I would so get an AMD 8 core system with 32GB or more of RAM and a good SSD plus a midrange GPU and call it a day.

Right now I have an Core i7 920, 24gb ddr3, and a base (but new) nvidia quadro p620. I've got an intel s3100 1TB ssd. It's all kind of a mishmash.. I used it for really basic stuff before and never upgraded.

Intel's fastest quad core chips are about twice as fast as the i7-920. (25% better clock for clock, 50% higher clocks). Currently, AMD is a smidge slower clock for clock than Intel. Moving up to more cores is cheap though. This suggests that for less than $1000, it should be easy to put together motherboard, CPU, and RAM that will be 4+ times as fast in Premiere.

If you're buying new there are any number of directions to go. But I generally advise against proprietary, unless you get a super deal. AMD seems to be the way to go these days, though myself I've been dragged over to the Intel side and are likely to stay there for a good while.

So you want to build something I take it? Uh, you mentioned xeon? Well you can choose between slightly older lga1366 or newer lga2066 or lha3647. If you shop around on ebay you can find lga1366 mobos that support ddr3 or ddr4. If you're adventurous and don't mind getting your hands dirty you could go that route.

I got a deal on an lga2066 mobo, which has since been discontinued, and there doesn't seem to be any longer deals in that category. I used aliexpress to obtain an Apple iMac oem xeon chip on the cheap, took quite a while to even discover something like that as an option. The chip is nearly the equivalent of a w-2145 (actual part is w-2140b) which costs in excess of a grand. I paid about 200$. Lga3647 is expensive as it is currently bleeding edge server grade. Lga3647 is available in dual cpu mobos, lga2066 is not. You need a c422 mobo for lga2066 xeon, x299 mobos will not work (i5,i7,i9 lga2066). You probably would't be interested, but I might decide to sell the mobo/cpu combo.

Anyway you could just opt for an lga1151 mobo from newegg and populate it as you see fit. It's all a question of how much you need. You'll likely want an i7, maybe even a fast i5. Plenty of deals on ddr4, if you want zero issues stick with Corsair. It's great fun putting together a consumer grafe pc, somewhat morw so then a server. Maybe because the components have more visual appeal. Although there are times when proprietary pc's seem attractive, if I had nothing I wouldn't hesitate to build mynown pc.

And yes you seem to get more performance for the dollar going with amd. But someone else would need to advise you on that. For now and sometime to come I'm a Lintel fanboy. But my laptop has a beastly slow amd chip. Works well enough though.